267 lines
14 KiB
Markdown
267 lines
14 KiB
Markdown
---
|
||
created_at: '2017-05-30T08:06:21.000Z'
|
||
title: On anthropomorphism in science (1985)
|
||
url: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD09xx/EWD936.html
|
||
author: dopkew
|
||
points: 70
|
||
story_text:
|
||
comment_text:
|
||
num_comments: 62
|
||
story_id:
|
||
story_title:
|
||
story_url:
|
||
parent_id:
|
||
created_at_i: 1496131581
|
||
_tags:
|
||
- story
|
||
- author_dopkew
|
||
- story_14443638
|
||
objectID: '14443638'
|
||
year: 1985
|
||
|
||
---
|
||
On anthropomorphism in science
|
||
|
||
(Delivered at The Philosophers’ Lunch, 25 September 1985)
|
||
|
||
I must apologize for not speaking to you, but reading to you. I chose to
|
||
do so because, not yet feeling quite at home, I am a bit nervous. Of
|
||
course I can argue to myself that I don’t need to, but that does not
|
||
always work.
|
||
|
||
I can argue to myself that I grew up in a country whose population is
|
||
only slightly larger than that of Texas, so why should I feel not at
|
||
home? I spent most of my life at two universities, one four centuries
|
||
old, the other a quarter, and if I take the geometric mean of those two
|
||
ages I arrive precisely at that of UT, so why shouldn’t I feel at home
|
||
here?
|
||
|
||
Well, actually it is not too bad. I think I am much happier here than I
|
||
would have been, say, at XXX–XXX where it is possible to lose sight of
|
||
what it means to be an intellectual. The reason that I am a bit nervous
|
||
is that I am not quite sure what philosophers do and, hence, somewhat
|
||
uncertain about my role here.
|
||
|
||
OK, so much for an irrelevant introduction; it was given to give you the
|
||
opportunity to adapt your ear to my English.
|
||
|
||
\* \* \*
|
||
|
||
I chose “anthropomorphism” because —besides being a nice broad topic— it
|
||
is so pervasive that many of my colleagues don’t realize how pernicious
|
||
it is.
|
||
|
||
Let me first relate my experience that drove home how pervasive
|
||
anthropomorphism is. It took place at one of the monthly meetings of the
|
||
science section of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences,
|
||
where we were shown a motion picture made through a microscope. Thanks
|
||
to phase contrast microscopy —the invention for which Zernike got the
|
||
Nobel Prize— it is now possible to see through the microscope undyed
|
||
cultures of living cells, and that was what they had done while making
|
||
this motion picture. It showed us —somewhat accelerated— the life of a
|
||
culture of amoebae. For quite a while we looked at something we had
|
||
never seen: I can only describe it as identifiable bubbles with
|
||
irregular changing contours, slowly moving without any pattern through a
|
||
two-dimensional aquarium. To all intents and purposes it could have been
|
||
some sort of dynamic wallpaper. It was, in fact, rather boring, looking
|
||
at those aimlessly moving grey blots, until one of the amoeba in the
|
||
centre of the screen began to divide. We saw it constrict, we saw in
|
||
succession all the images familiar from our high-school biology, we saw
|
||
the centres of the two halves move in opposite directions until they
|
||
were only connected by a thin thread as they began to pull more
|
||
frantically at either end of the leash that still connected them.
|
||
Finally the connection broke and the two swam away from each other at
|
||
the maximum speed young amoebae can muster.
|
||
|
||
The fascinating and somewhat frightening observation, however, was that
|
||
at the moment of the rupture one hundred otherwise respectable
|
||
scientists gave all a sigh of relief: “at last they had succeeded in
|
||
freeing themselves from each other.” None of us had been able to resist,
|
||
as the division process went on, the temptation to discern two
|
||
individuals with which we could identify and of which we felt —more in
|
||
our bones than in our brains, but that is beside the point— how much
|
||
they “wanted” to get loose. A whole pattern of human desires had been
|
||
projected on those blots\! Crazy, of course, but such is the pervasive
|
||
and insidious habit of anthropomorphic thought.
|
||
|
||
Is anthropomorphic thinking bad? Well, it is certainly no good in the
|
||
sense that it does not help. Why did the stone fall in Greek antiquity?
|
||
Quite simply because it wanted to go to the centre of the earth. And,
|
||
several centuries later, we had the burning question: why do stones want
|
||
to go to the centre of the earth? Well, that is simple too: because
|
||
that’s where they belong. Why are heavier stones heavier than lighter
|
||
stones? Because they are more eager to be at the centre of the earth.
|
||
But then Galileo made the troubling discovery that the heavier stone
|
||
does not fall any faster than the lighter one. How come? Simple, dear
|
||
Watson: the heavier stone has indeed a greater desire to be at the
|
||
centre of the earth, but it is also more lazy. So much for a —be it
|
||
somewhat simplified— history of the development of physics. I trust you
|
||
got the message.
|
||
|
||
So anthropomorphic thinking is no good in the sense that it does not
|
||
help. But is it also bad? Yes, it is, because even if we can point to
|
||
some analogy between Man and Thing, the analogy is always negligible in
|
||
comparison to the differences, and as soon as we allow ourselves to be
|
||
seduced by the analogy to describe the Thing in anthropomorphic
|
||
terminology, we immediately lose our control over which human
|
||
connotations we drag into the picture. And as most of those are totally
|
||
inadequate, the anthropomorphism becomes more misleading than helpful.
|
||
|
||
I started as a theoretical physicist, became involved in computing and
|
||
may end up as a mathematician. It is specifically my connection with
|
||
computing that has made me allergic, since computing science is cursed
|
||
by a rampant anthropomorphism.
|
||
|
||
This has been so right from its inception, and found its way in the
|
||
public perception of the topic, as is illustrated by the title of the
|
||
book that Edmund C. Berkeley published in the fifties: “Giant Brains or
|
||
Machines that Think”. The simplest way of showing how preposterous that
|
||
title is is by pointing at its two companion volumes —still to be
|
||
written— “Giant Hearts or Machines that Fall in Love” and “Giant Souls
|
||
or Machines that Believe in God”, the most fascinating feature of the
|
||
latter, of course, being that they can believe in God much faster than
|
||
you. Regrettably we cannot sweep this nonsense under the rug by saying
|
||
“Why bother? This is only popular press”. It finds its echo in
|
||
publications that are intended to be serious, such as Grace M. Hopper’s
|
||
article with the title “The education of a computer.”. It also finds its
|
||
reflection in the multi-billion yen mistake of the Japanese “fifth
|
||
generation computer project”, of which you may have heard. It would have
|
||
taken care of the Japanese competition; regrettably —for the Western
|
||
world— they seem to come to their senses, as the larger Japanese
|
||
companies are pulling out of the efforts aimed at blurring the
|
||
distinction between Man and Machine.
|
||
|
||
But the blur continues to linger on, and has a much wider impact than
|
||
you might suspect. You see, it is not only that the question “Can
|
||
machines think?” is regularly raised; we can —and should— deal with that
|
||
by pointing out that it is just as relevant as the equally burning
|
||
question “Can submarines swim?” A more serious byproduct of the tendency
|
||
to talk about machines in anthropomorphic terms is the companion
|
||
phenomenon of talking about people in mechanistic terminology. The
|
||
critical reading of articles about computer-assisted learning —excuse
|
||
me: CAL for the intimi— leaves you no option: in the eyes of their
|
||
authors, the educational process is simply reduced to a caricature,
|
||
something like the building up of conditional reflexes. For those
|
||
educationists, Pavlov’s dog adequately captures the essence of Mankind
|
||
—while I can assure you, from intimate observations, that it only
|
||
captures a minute fraction of what is involved in being a dog—.
|
||
|
||
The anthropomorphic metaphor is perhaps even more devastating within
|
||
computing science itself. Its use is almost all-pervading. To give you
|
||
just an example: entering a lecture hall at a conference I caught just
|
||
one sentence and quickly went out again. The sentence started with “When
|
||
this guy wants to talk to that guy...”. The speaker referred to two
|
||
components of a computer network.
|
||
|
||
The trouble with the metaphor is, firstly, that it invites you to
|
||
identify yourself with the computational processes going on in system
|
||
components and, secondly, that we see ourselves as existing in time.
|
||
Consequently the use of the metaphor forces one to what we call
|
||
“operational reasoning”, that is reasoning in terms of the
|
||
computational processes that could take place. From a methodological
|
||
point of view this is a well-identified and well-documented mistake: it
|
||
induces a combinatorial explosion of the number of cases to consider and
|
||
designs thus conceived are as a result full of bugs.
|
||
|
||
It is possible to base one’s reasoning on non-operational semantics and
|
||
to design for instance one’s programs by manipulating one’s program text
|
||
as a formal object in its own right, in one’s arguments completely
|
||
ignoring that these texts also admit the interpretation of executable
|
||
code. By ignoring the computational processes one saves oneself from the
|
||
combinatorial explosion. This nonoperational approach is the only known
|
||
reliable way of digital system design, and enables you to publish for
|
||
instance in full confidence intricate algorithms you designed but never
|
||
tested on a machine. The implied abstraction, in which time has
|
||
disappeared from the picture, is however beyond the computing scientist
|
||
imbued with the operational approach that the anthropomorphic metaphor
|
||
induces. In a very real and tragic sense he has a mental block: his
|
||
anthropomorphic thinking erects an insurmountable barrier between him
|
||
and the only effective way in which his work can be done well. By the
|
||
prevailing anthropomorphism the US, computer industry could easily be
|
||
done in.
|
||
|
||
It is not only the industry that suffers, so does the science. Recently,
|
||
a whole group of computing scientists from all over the world has wasted
|
||
several years of effort. They had decided to apply to the relationship
|
||
between a component and its environment a dichotomy: the “obligations”
|
||
of the environment versus the “responsibilities” of the component. The
|
||
terminology alone should have been sufficient to make them very
|
||
suspicious; it did not and they learned the hard way that the whole
|
||
distinction did not make sense.
|
||
|
||
Another notion that creeps in as a result of our anthropomorphism is the
|
||
dichotomy of cause and effect. These terms come from our perception of
|
||
our intended acts: we wish to pour ourselves a glass of wine, so we pick
|
||
up the bottle and turn it, thereby causing the wine to flow from the
|
||
bottle into our glass. Our act of pouring had the desired effect. But in
|
||
the inanimate world there is little place for such a causal hierarchy.
|
||
One of Newton’s Laws says that force equals mass times acceleration, and
|
||
there is no point in insisting that the one causes the other or the
|
||
other way round: they are equal. In the case of a piezo-electric crystal
|
||
deformation and voltage difference are accompanying phenomena: if one
|
||
applies a voltage difference, the crystal changes its shape, if the
|
||
crystal is deformed, a voltage difference appears (as we all know from
|
||
the butane cigarette lighter).
|
||
|
||
In particular the study of distributed computer systems has severely
|
||
suffered from the vain effort to impose a causal hierarchy on the events
|
||
that constitute a computational process, thus completely hiding the
|
||
symmetry between the sending and the receiving of messages, and between
|
||
input and output.
|
||
|
||
But even in the so much more abstract world of mathematics this has
|
||
created havoc. It has caused a preponderance of mathematical structures
|
||
of the form: “If A then B” or equivalently “A implies B”. Take good old
|
||
Pythagoras
|
||
|
||
> “If, in triangle ABC, angle C is right, then a2+b2=c2”.
|
||
|
||
but we have equally well
|
||
|
||
> “If, in triangle ABC, a2+b2=c2, then angle C is right”.
|
||
|
||
and the proper way of stating Pythagoras’s Theorem is by saying that in
|
||
triangle ABC “a2+b2=c2” and “angle C is right” are equivalent
|
||
propositions, either both true or both false. Analyzing the structure of
|
||
traditional mathematical arguments one will discover that the
|
||
equivalence is the most underexploited logical connective, in contrast
|
||
to the implication that is used all over the place. The
|
||
underexploitation of the equivalence, i.e. the failure to exploit
|
||
inherent symmetries, often lengthens an argument by a factor of 2, 4 or
|
||
more.
|
||
|
||
Why then have mathematicians stuck to the implication? Well, because
|
||
they feel comfortable with it because they associate it —again\!— with
|
||
cause and effect. They will rephrase “If A then B” also as “B because A”
|
||
or “B follows from A”. (The use of the words “because” and “follows” is
|
||
very revealing\!). Somehow, in the implication “if A then B”, the
|
||
antecedent A is associated with the cause and the consequent B with the
|
||
effect.
|
||
|
||
One can defend the thesis that traditional mathematics is
|
||
anthropomorphic in the sense that its proofs reflect the causal
|
||
hierarchy we discern in our acts, in the same way that traditional logic
|
||
—for centuries viewed as the handmaiden of philosophy— is
|
||
anthropomorphic in the sense that it tries to formalize and follow our
|
||
habits of reasoning.
|
||
|
||
The advantage of this thesis is that it invites the speculation how
|
||
mathematics and logic will evolve when they divest themselves from our
|
||
ingrained human reasoning habits, when the role of formalisms will no
|
||
longer be to mimic our familiar reasoning patterns but to liberate
|
||
ourselves from the latter’s shackles.
|
||
|
||
And that is a fascinating question to ponder about\!
|
||
|
||
Austin, 23 September 1985
|
||
|
||
prof. dr. Edsger W. Dijkstra
|
||
Department of Computer Sciences
|
||
The University of Texas at Austin
|
||
AUSTIN, Texas 78712–1188
|
||
USA
|
||
|
||
Transcribed by Michael Lugo
|
||
|
||
Last revised 10 April, 2016 .
|